Women's Basketball: Tigers earn first trip to NCAA Tournament

Many of the women’s basketball team’s victories this season have been blowouts. But as fate would have it, the weekend in which the Tigers could clinch the Ivy League championship also provided the most difficult games of the season, as they faced the defending champion and the clear second-best team in the league on back-to-back evenings.

But though neither victory came easily, the Tigers (25-2 overall, 13-0 Ivy League) defeated Dartmouth (11-16, 6-7) 64-43 on Friday and then pulled out a 78-66 victory on Saturday at Harvard (19-8, 10-3). The two wins secured the outright Ivy League championship and Princeton’s first-ever trip to the NCAA tournament.

The Big Green and the Crimson have combined to earn at least a share of the last five conference titles, but the Orange and Black convincingly ended their reign atop the Ivy League. Princeton also extended its win streak to a remarkable 20 games — the third-longest streak in the country.

“We’ve never swept both Harvard and Dartmouth [before],” senior guard and co-captain Tani Brown said. “It just shows how consistently we’ve tried to play over the course of the Ivy League season. Being able to sweep the two preeminent powerhouses — two times in a row — says a lot about our ability to play consistently and our ability to adjust.”

Dartmouth provided the Tigers with their toughest test during their first run through the league, and the rematch proved similar. Though Princeton jumped out to a five-point lead halfway through the first period, the Big Green slowed the game down, ending the half on a 16-6 run that spanned 10 minutes but just 13 possessions. The Tigers went into the break down by five, their largest halftime deficit of the season.

The Tigers immediately found their bearings in the second half. A bucket plus one from freshman forward Niveen Rasheed was followed one possession later by a jumper from sophomore center Devona Allgood to tie the game. Both frontcourt players finished the game with 10 points.

Moments later, a layup from freshman guard Lauren Polansky gave the Tigers the lead for good. Polansky, a true point guard, often goes entire games without attempting a shot, but she hit three of her attempts against the Big Green. While Dartmouth limited Princeton’s “big four” — Rasheed, Allgood, junior guard Addie Micir and sophomore guard Lauren Edwards — to largely inefficient shots (a combined 17-47), the other Tigers stepped up, hitting eight of their 11 field-goal attempts.

“Everyone just stepped up,” Rasheed said. “The thing about this team that’s amazing is that … we have 12 players that can come in without missing a beat. Players stepped up when we needed them to, and every basket counted to help us get on a run and get our energy.”

With 12 minutes remaining and Princeton holding on to a three-point lead, Edwards converted a three-point play and scored after an offensive rebound on the next possession. The sophomore finished with a team-high 16 points, none more important than these five, which sparked a 24-6 Tiger run that put the game well out of reach.

“I wasn’t really worried [when trailing at halftime],” Brown said. “A lot of calls weren’t going our way, and Dartmouth came out with pretty good defense at the beginning of the game. We knew that once we got into our rhythm and made a few changes to our offense, we would be fine.”

Simply put, Princeton beat the Big Green at its own game. Dartmouth plays at a notoriously slow pace, and this one clocked in at an estimated 56 possessions, the lowest of Princeton’s season. But though the Big Green ranks near the top of the league in offensive-rebound rate and free-throw rate, the Tigers limited the home team to just two offensive rebounds in the second half while attempting twice as many free throws. Princeton also won the turnover battle, as it now has in all but two of its league games, forcing 20 miscues for the game while coughing up the ball just eight times.

The victory against Dartmouth clinched at least a share of the Ivy League championship for Princeton, but the Tigers aimed to earn the title outright the following day at Harvard. The visitors again struck early, opening the game with six consecutive points from their frontcourt. But the Crimson would not go down easily, embarking on a 12-2 run midway through the half to take a five-point lead.

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Consecutive jumpers by forward Victoria Lippert extended the Crimson lead to seven points with three minutes remaining in the period. But Edwards then took over, driving for a layup, earning a steal and converting a three-point play on the other end, and then hitting a jumper, tying the game in a one-minute span. Princeton led by three at the half.

When facing a close game at halftime, the Tigers have usually dominated the second period, but Harvard pushed them harder than any team has so far. Another Lippert jumper tied the game with 11 minutes left, but Princeton then held the hosts scoreless for five-and-a-half minutes, capping the sequence with a triple by Brown. The Tigers held Harvard — the league’s most accurate team entering the contest — to just 39 percent shooting, its lowest percentage since the first time these two teams met.

The Crimson would not be shut down forever, though, and a three-point play from star forward Emma Markley — who finished with 21 points, the most an individual has posted against Princeton in league play — pulled Harvard within four points at the five-minute mark. But then the Tigers played perhaps their best three-minute stretch of basketball this season, scoring nine consecutive points in a hostile environment with the game on the line. Rasheed, who paced the visitors with 23 points, hit a pair of layups, and Micir finished the job with two baskets of her own, the last a three-pointer to put the game away.

“Playing on that court was fun, because [Harvard] has not lost a game all season on their home court, and we knew that they still had a chance in the Ivy League,” Rasheed said. “On the 9-0 run, you could see the emotions we went through … Every time a second went off the clock, we just felt amazing, and the energy was unreal.”

Princeton still has one regular-season game remaining, a date with Penn (2-25, 1-12) on Tuesday. It will enter that game as the heavy favorite, and a victory would give the Tigers the first perfect Ivy League season since Harvard’s in 2002–03.

Princeton will learn its NCAA Tournament seed and opponent when the brackets are revealed on March 15 and will play its first-round game on March 20 or 21. ESPN’s Charlie Creme currently projects that the Tigers will earn a No. 12 seed.